Finding and Managing Literature

Scientists have to gather, read, and keep track of a huge range of papers and source materials. Here I have gathered a few resources and ideas for managing this without losing complete control.

Searching for Citations

There are a lot of databases out there for searching, more all the time. We have a number of excellent ones available through the University of Utah libraries and here are some pointers to my favorites.

The new policy from NIH on public access to publications will also change the landscape as more and more papers start to populate the database.

General Search Sites

Note: please send me links to publicly accessible literature databases in the areas of engineering and for conference proceedings. Pubmed and Medline have the medical world covered very well but Engineering is missing such a reference.

Journal Search Sites

Lots of journals now let you search and even download articles, a wonderful way to avoid a trip to the library.

Libraries

Managing your own reference database

Done stupidly, managing a literature database can be as much fun as visiting the endodontist, but there are smarter ways to go. Use them and your visit to the dentist becomes a chat with the nice lady who cleans your teeth. Some only sensible ways to manage references are:

Reviewing Links

Guidelines for Authors

Here are pointers to the guidelines that we use when submitting papers to different journals.

Last update: Wed Jul 25 11:05:31 2001 by Rob MacLeod